What do Muslims Think of Missions?
CBN.com - Muslims certainly have a strong sense of mission. We can see this in the dedication and fervor of the Afghan "Mujahideen" and the Shiites in Iran and Lebanon, the proliferation of "fundamentalist" movements, and the effort to win the West over to Islam. But just how do they understand that mission?
Muslims believe that when God "called" Muhammad, he was given a mission, not just to call people to worship the One true God, but to establish a social order based on "the Law of God" (identified, of course, with Islamic law). To them, the first Islamic state at Medina represents a political model that is valid for all time. To their dismay, the Muslim world was in full decline by the end of the sixteenth century, but its fortune seems to have turned in recent years.
Today, not only has most of the Muslim world regained its independence, but the geo-political position some countries enjoy as custodians of most of the world's oil reserves gives Islam tremendous political and economic clout. Muslims also see the "Christian" West sinking into a mire of immorality and relativism, and bitterly resent the exportation to the Muslim world of our moral filth along with our technology. Is it any wonder that we see them speaking out for moral absolutes with a strong sense of mission? All of these things tend to confirm their conviction that Islam has a mission from God to create a new world-order and to stimulate their zeal to bring it about.
As Christians concerned with the rising tide of relativism and anti-religion we see today, we are grateful for other voices which echo that concern. The idea of a social order based on religious law is another matter. The problem is not so much with Islamic law per se as with the utopian view of human nature behind it. It is assumed that man is essentially good, and that a knowledge of God's Law is therefore sufficient, not only for man to fulfill the Law but also to enable him to infallibly interpret and apply it in a court of justice!
In the Biblical perspective, the best of laws--even Divine Law--cannot create an ideal social order; law can only give a "knowledge of sin" as it is "weak through the flesh" (
